Black Hawk crews arrived to 'war zone' day after Gatlinburg wildfires
GATLINBURG — Aboard Black Hawk helicopters flying over the Smoky Mountains into Gatlinburg on Nov. 29, Tracy Banta said there was just one way to describe what he saw.
“It looked like a war zone,” said Banta, a sergeant first class with the Tennessee Army National Guard stations at the McGhee Tyson Airport base. “You can’t explain it any differently. You would have thought they had dropped a bomb in these places. It looked like a city that had been destroyed in Afghanistan or Iraq.”
Banta said the base was called the evening of Nov. 28 — the day gale-force winds blew the fire from Chimney Tops Trail in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park into the city of Gatlinburg, ultimately destroying or damaging more than 2,500 structures.
“We got the call saying that there was a massive fire in the Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge area and to have our buckets ready to go in the morning,” he said. “The next morning, we arrived here at 6 a.m. and prepared to take off.”
Historic 2016 fire season
The historic 2016 fire season, which started in late September, had really been the first test of the Black Hawk crews flying out of Knoxville. The aircraft had been at the base less than two years, having previously been stationed in Nashville.
“This unit was all new two years ago,” Banta said. “It was like you took a JV team and threw them into the big game, and they did well. They just took their training and ran with it.”
The group had been fighting forest fires in areas around Chattanooga, Walland, Cocke County and elsewhere for more than a month, but the Gatlinburg fire was in a league of its own.
“The winds were horrible that day,” Banta said. “There are so many things that can happen with winds around mountains. You have wind shear, updrafts, downdrafts. When you are carrying that water bucket, that extra weight, the wind pushes you down. We got pretty low anyway dropping the water.”
Gatlinburg was a different battle
It also differed in that the other wildfires were fought mostly in the woods, trying to cool off fire lines and keep the blazes away from a few structures. In Gatlinburg, more than 1,000 structures were burning.
“Logistically, there were a lot of moving parts,” Banta said. “Our guys were working 14 to 16 hours a day from the time they got here to the time they went home. They weren’t in the air that whole time, but they were working.
“For us, the biggest thing was saving property. We were really trying to get to places where the crews couldn’t go. There were a lot of places that had not even seen a fire crew or truck when we showed up.”
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A line that dangled 30 feet below the copter held a "Bambi" bucket that could hold 650 gallons of water. The crew would consist of a pilot, a co-pilot, two crew members responsible for dropping the water, and a state forestry employee.
Staff Sgt. Giovanni Dezuani was among the crew members responsible for dropping the water.
“Your feet are hanging out the aircraft,” he said. “But you are in a full-body harness and have another strap to protect you from falling out of the helicopter. You can see below, above, side to side, almost 360 degrees.”
Most of the time the copter would work with a spotter on the ground to determine where to drop the water, but sometimes the copters dropped water on their own.
“If we saw something we could save, we tried to save it,” Banta said.
He talks of one structure copter crews took to calling “the Alamo.”
“It was up on the hill behind Ripley’s (Aquarium of the Smokies),” he said. “It was the only house by itself in that area. We ran a water line around it and there was fire coming up to that water line on all sides. We worked hard to save that one.”
Only 4 water buckets
The state of Tennessee has only four of these water buckets, all over 20 years old. Two are kept at the McGhee Tyson Airport, one in Jackson and one in Nashville. They were all called in on the Gatlinburg fire.
“They are old, but they are like a Model T Ford,” Banta said. “They don’t have a lot of parts and they are still reliable.”
Banta said each helicopter was making around 50 water dumps each of the two days they stayed busy in Gatlinburg. Part of the issue is always finding water sources — ponds and streams where the bucket has at least five feet to be totally submerged and pull out the water.
The crews managed to get water mostly from the pond at Gatlinburg Golf Course in Pigeon Forge, but had other sources.
Crews were brought in from the state’s other bases to help in the effort.
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Helicopter pilots were often cited as some of the true heroes of the firefighting effort, but Banta said there were plenty of other heroes to go around.
“The support people, those were the heroes for us,” he said. “Refuelers, maintenance, ground supervisors made everything we needed work. There were probably four people for every one person that was on that copter.”
Dezuani had a few more heroes to add.
“They all came together, from Dolly Parton, to help centers, to Red Cross to restaurants that opened their doors to feed first responders for free. If it hadn’t been for everyone coming together, that community would still be scared. That community has healed itself in ways I have never seen.”
Related:
Prologue: 1 year ago, a 'whole mountain on fire' forever changed Gatlinburg
Part I: Mountaintop spark, rising wind lit the fuse for Gatlinburg firestorm
Part II: Air attacks, big box couldn't cage fire's surge toward Gatlinburg
Part III: 'Like Armageddon': How the Gatlinburg fire became unstoppable and swarmed a city
Part IV: 'No way out': Sacrifice and survival in the final desperate hours of the Gatlinburg fire
Jack McElroy: Special report caps year of coverage of Gatlinburg wildfire
We knew we lost our home': Immigrant family recalls escape from Gatlinburg wildfires 1 year ago
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Ways of the winds: How fast did gales blow the night of the Gatlinburg wildfire?
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Park rangers' actions saved lives in Gatlinburg wildfires
Map: Fires reported during the Gatlinburg fire
Map: 911 calls of Nov. 28 Gatlinburg fire that resulted in 14 deaths